A Sound Withheld
Dennison Smith’s Fermata and Catherine Owen’s Trobairitz are two poetic texts significant not only for the sounds they make, but for what they withhold. For all the cacophony and multivoicedness sustained in each text, there are plenty of moments that give the reader pause. Fermata (a lyrical text of Zen-like suspension) and Trobairitz (a text that weds twelfth-century troubadours and their female counterparts, the trobairitz, with twenty-first century metalheads) are worlds apart; yet, both texts resonate with silences, shift between suffering, love, and desire, and combine and reclaim traditional materials with the alchemical power of the fearless poetess who conducts language at the centre of each narrative.
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PAUL WATKINS 